As election season looms, there are some candidate voices who seem to have a grasp on the issues the country faces and what needs to be done. Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock (www.richardmourdock.com) is attempting to unseat Senator Dick Durban. Under Mourdock’s leadership Indiana actually built up a cash surplus and saw their bond ratings achieve AAA status.

As we plow into times which may well resemble the Great Depression, there are lessons to be learned about how people got along and helped each other from those who lived through it. John interviews his father-in-law, George Crossan, whose ranching family lived through those difficult times. It’s an interesting look at life in western America during the Depression.

John’s boralogue combines observations from his recent road trip to the wreckage so many progressive socialist programs have left in their wake the last 60 years, and why so many are now collapsing of the their own unsustainable weight.

Appeal to Ignorance _ claiming the unknown; specifically when someone argues that a statement is true simply because it has never been proven false. (argumentum ad ignorantiam)

Example:

There is no evidence against “X”. Therefore, “X”.

There is no evidence for “X”. Therefore, “X”.

If “X” were true, then I would know that “X”.
I don’t know that “X”. Therefore, “X” is false.

The Appeal to Ignorance fallacy occurs when lack of evidence is used as evidence in an argument. If positive evidence for the conclusion is found, then we have reasons for accepting it, but a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence.

We’re doing the show from Miami this week where we’re speaking to a church on the trends, which will be affecting us in the next five years.

As such, we’re taking time off again this week and presenting the speech John did in Branson, Missouri, in spring this year, featuring an update on the possibility of persecution coming to the church in the West.

John’s boralogue analyzes the results of talking to Americans on a 3,000 mile drive from the Pacific Northwest to Florida.

So who was Antonio Gramsci? An Italian communist who realized that Leninist Marxism wasn’t going to work. So he created a new system staging a long march through the culture, especially in academia and the media. His method involved changing the attitudes of each generation and introducing Marxism that way.

Saul Alinsky was a key figure who employed Gramsci’s ideas in the United States. Art Crino joins us to discuss the history of this creative Marxist whose work influences us today.

Then we’ll air parts of an address John gave at Steeling the Mind in February, laying an historic trail how American values were so radically changed over just 50-60 years.

During his boralogue, John reads articles written around 1918 by the founder of progressive education, John Dewey. Already Dewey was thinking about converting education into a socialist collective along lines with the abolition of individualism.

Appeal to Emotion _ the attempt to persuade people by evoking strong emotions rather than making a logical argument.

Example:

“It’s for the children; those poor, innocent children!”

Other fallacies in the same category:

Appeal to Envy (Argumentum ad Invidiam)

Appeal to Fear (Argumentum ad Metum)

Appeal to Hatred (Argumentum ad Odium)

Appeal to Pity (Argumentum ad Misericordiam)

Appeal to Pride (Argumentum ad Superbiam)

Wishful Thinking

Strong emotions can displace rational thought, and manipulating emotions in an argument is fallacious. When we have strong emotions, we often want to take some sort of action but we must assess whether or not the actions we take are motivated by irrational feelings.

Americans are now awash in an avalanche of laws and regulations they can’t possible know or keep, and it’s tangling thousands of them in legal actions, even prosecutions. George Terwilliger was a U.S. deputy attorney general under the George H.W. Bush administration, and he says we need to get this under control because it’s killing business.

Next we’ll examine the BATF’s “Fast and Furious” arms running program, whereby the agency apparently sanctioned illegal sales of weapons to “straw” buyers acting on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. One of these resulted in the death of an American border agent. Jim Gilchrist from the Minuteman Project (www.minutemanproject.com) joins us.